It is true that Luther had, from the very beginning of his exposition, as the editor of the Commentary justly points out, “taken his stand against the scholastic [rather the Church’s] doctrine of salvation; it is apparent at the very outset of the lectures that the separation has already taken place.” It could not be otherwise, as at the commencement of the Commentary he already denies the power of man to do what is good. Ficker also says with truth: “Luther again and again comes back to his oldest and deepest torment, viz. the struggle against free will and man’s individual powers”;[563] his study of St. Paul confirms his views, which now take clearer shape, until finally “he incontinently identifies his opponents with the Pelagians.”[564] With regard to Luther’s tenets on faith in the matter of salvation he has so far not departed in any essential from the accepted olden doctrine that faith is the commencement, root and foundation of salvation. The editor of the Commentary also admits, though with limitations, the very remarkable fact that faith does not yet occupy in the Commentary on Romans the position which Luther assigns to it later: “the ‘_fides_,’ which Luther explains with the help of a number of terms borrowed from his lectures on the Psalms, in the exposition of the Pauline Epistle does not as yet appear in its entire fulness and depth, as the expression of the relation of man to the eternal, at least not to the same extent as it does later; frequently we have a mere reproduction of the Pauline phraseology; there is no lack of reminiscences of Augustine, and the results of an Occamist training are also apparent.”[565] We certainly cannot say that at the very beginning of the Commentary,[566] faith or even “_sola fides_” is conceded the high place which it is afterwards to occupy in his system; the expression “_sola fides_” occurs there by pure accident and does not bear its later meaning; it is only intended to elucidate a sentence which in itself is correct: “_iustitia Dei est causa salutis_.” By this is meant that “_fides evangelii_” to which, as Luther says, Augustine ascribes justification, but which the latter, according to Luther’s own admission, did not intend to take in the sense of the later Lutheran “_sola fides_.” Above all, as already pointed out, faith, in the Commentary on Romans, lacks its chief characteristic and does not of itself alone produce an absolute assurance of the state of grace. It was only in 1518 that Luther arrived at his peculiar belief in justification by virtue of a confident faith in Christ (assurance of salvation).[567]